Q. What are the economic impacts of tobacco use? A. The epidemic poses a long-term economic threat to countries and may slow their development. Tobacco negatively affects the welfare of users and costs the world hundreds of billions of dollars each year in lost productivity. If the epidemic worsens, the economic losses in highly populated developing countries will be severe. Many of these countries are manufacturing centres for the global economy and the growing number of tobacco-related deaths - half of which occur during prime productive years - will impose a heavy burden on these economies. |
